T-Mobile Sidekick Sales Discontinued as Microsoft Shifts Attentions

T-Mobile announced it will no longer sell the Sidekick LX or Sidekick 2008, though it will continue to support customers who use these phones. The Sidekick is made by a subsidiary of Microsoft-which is focusing its energies on Windows Phone 7.

T-Mobile will no longer sell the Sidekick LX or Sidekick 2008 - not at T-Mobile stores, or retail stores or online.

Currently a Sidekick owner? No worries, the carrier said in a statement
July 2. "While we work on the next chapter of our storied Sidekick
franchise, T-Mobile will continue to provide our loyal Sidekick
customers with product service and support."

The T-Mobile-branded handsets - originally made by Danger, which was
acquired by Microsoft in 2008 - began selling six years ago and
featured a somehow-consistently-fun display that, when nudged, swung
down and up and over, to reveal and sit atop a full QWERTY kepad.

The Sidekick was at first synonymous with Paris Hilton - an early user - and later being hacked into, again in regard to Hilton.

In October 2009, the brand suffered another blow after a server issue caused users' personal data to be wiped from nearly 800,000 Sidekicks.
While many expected T-Mobile to suspend sales of the devices at that
point, on Nov. 17, 2009, it instead announced new pricing for the
Sidekick LX 2009 and Sidekick 2008. Customers were also offered the
conciliatory gesture of a $100 T-Mobile gift card and a month of free
data service.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.